FERDINAND  LASSALLE.

6l

thus  lead  to  the  solution  of  the  problem.  Observed  facts  in
France  would  lead  to  this  conclusion.
In  fact,  France,  along  with  Switzerland  and  Norway,  is  the
country  in  which  property  is  distributed  amongst  the  greatest
number  of  holders,  and  well-being  is  most  equally  divided,  and
It  is  also  the  country  in  which  population  increases  most  slowly.
During  the  last  twenty  years,  notwithstanding  the  most  terrible
convulsions,  wealth  has  increased  there  more  than  anywhere
else,  while  the  population  has  remained  almost  stationary.  In
Germany  there  is  much  less  comfort  among  the  people;  the
labourer,  especially  in  the  rural  parts,  is  far  worse  paid.  Notwithstanding ­
  the  great  progress  of  industry  and  of  agriculture,
which  have  had  to  struggle  against  a  naturally  sterile  soil,  the
country  is  still  poor  ;  and  yet  the  population  is  doubled  every
fifty-four  years.  It  increases  at  the  same  rate  in  England,
where  the  number  of  landowners  is  small  and  that  of  the
labourers  very  large.
When  Arthur  Young  travelled  in  France,  and  saw  the  soil
divided  amongst  a  vast  number  of  holders,  he  predicted  the
country  would  be  transformed  into  a  rabbit-warren.  The  very
reverse  has  occurred.  The  population  increases  so  slowly  that
now  and  again  there  come  cries  of  alarm.  M.  Léonce  de
Lavergne  was  himself  startled  at  it.  Nevertheless,  he  who  had
so  well  analyzed  the  writings  of  the  eighteenth  century  economists, ­
  should  not  have  forgotten  Quesnay’s  profound  maxim,
which  sums  up  the  whole  question  in  two  words  :  “  Be  less
anxious  for  the  increase  of  population  than  for  the  increase  of
incomes.”  That  Napoleon  should  reply  to  Madame  de  Staël,
when  she  asked  what  woman  he  most  admired,  “  The  one  who
has  most  children,”  is  perfectly  comprehensible  ;  for  what  a
conqueror  needs  is  plenty  of  food  for  powder;  but  what  an
Economist  should  have  in  view  is  the  happiness  of  men,  and
not  their  number.  Far  better  there  should  be  a  few  families,
thinly  peopling  a  district,  and  living  in  abundance,  than  compact ­
  masses  swarming  in  squalor.  France  fulfils  in  a  wonderful
way  the  hopes  of  Malthus,  of  Mill,  and  of  Joseph  Gamier,  and
she  offers  the  most  striking  refutation  of  the  “iron  law”  of
Lassalle.